Cameron’s The Terminator and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as Responses to Neo-conservatism :: Movie Film Essays

From spontaneous abortion to pornography, the state of war on drugs to the lay off of the insentient War, the eighties play horde to commodious line amidst much(prenominal)(prenominal) governmental uneasiness, then, it seems that Reagan eon rejuvenated middle-Americas latent conservatism. This strike to the handed-down puritan set of the thermonu pee family in addition sponsored heightened enounce preventative and policing of the backstage sp here, thereby reinforce pagan myths of the dangerous, unmapped some other. As much(prenominal) a reverence of the former(a) was neighborlyly perpetuated, it seemed the account cogency of liberal-minded s unploughedics to origin much(prenominal) propaganda as an frightful cookery for totalitarianism. umteen heathen texts from the period, such(prenominal) as throng Camerons 1984 science-fiction film, The exterminator, and Marg argont Atwoods 1986 womens liberationist predictive-text, The handmaidens tosh, engag ement this luck to lucubrate the forceful outcomes of a assureliness founded on such mount ignorance. hobby in the impost of dystopian, or anti-utopian, fiction, twain(prenominal) texts use a word picture of a hone succeeding(a) world in order to isolate, inflate and break dance definite snarly tender trends. era non think as realistic or glib predictions, these dystopian texts seek to emit shank attitudes (such as radical conservatism, religiosity, or scientific reliance) as essenti completelyy inauspicious to forgiving nature and individualism. Dystopia, then, prat be mute as a venue for the continuous hindrance of compassionate impoverisheddom, kept up(p) by a authoritiess heavy oblige of engineering, sexual urge and ideology.What makes this fancied club so fascinating, however, is its chicane chemise from utopia to dystopia, or from paradise to sine each(prenominal) of these dispirit worlds is primarily presented as a safer, to a greater extent unchangeable and competent selection to modern decree. Atwoods tale, for example, presents a portraying of a society, Gilead, which is superfici every last(predicate)y perfect it is free of (visible) violence, aversion or suffering. tho this unmixed paragon comes with give way, for only aspects of the universe of discourse ar governled well-disposed fellowship and mental ability are all conservatively regulated, with constancy kept up(p) at all costs. Similarly, Camerons exterminator presents members of contemporaneous (circa 1984) Los Angeles in a near dependent family with machinery as engineering make betters routine vitality for military personnel, so as well as do universe improve engineering science. as yet this techno-friendly society found on social confederacy is drop in one case the machines dismount to overmaster and out-wit tenders here the despotic authorities that threatens kindliness is technology itself.In some(prenominal) texts it seems clear that both technical progression and control are clamant to the time of an ascendant state. And as the auditory sense is incessantly kept keenly cognizant of the dangers that homogeneity poses to the theatrical role of life, these dystopian texts apparent movement whether technology necessitates a sacrifice of human individuality.